Feedback: Blue Gold - Putting a Price on Water

July 07, 2008

Letter to the Editor, Business Week

When a rich businessman - a former oilman and corporate raider, no less - decides that water is a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder, well, you can imagine the ruckus. Our Cover Story, "Is Water the New Oil?" (June 23), detailed the plans of T. Boone Pickens to build a pipeline to carry water 250 miles from underground reserves in parched West Texas to Dallas. (Pickens owns more water than any individual in the U.S.) Many readers focused on critics' argument that water is too precious to be bought and sold. But as the comments and letters poured in, another view emerged; that only by putting a price on water will people get serious about conserving it - Susan Berfield, Business Week

The story underscores a fundamental U.S. conflict: We claim to favor market approaches - except when a T. Boone Pickens comes along and shows us the free-market "full monty," as it were. He's only acting like any good capitalist. With public funds drying up at all levels of government, we're all going to have to make hard choices about who benefits and who pays for "public" services. Pickens is just ahead of the curve.
Richard Little
Director, Keston Institute for Public Finance and Infrastructre Policy
University of Southern California
Los Angeles